


a catalog of non-definitive acts

by demonzoro (saintdevour)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Angst, Emotional Repression, M/M, Pining, Rated T for swearing, Title from a Richard Siken poem (i am so sorry but also let me have this), brief mention of non-graphic drowning + gore, but can't bear to admit it because you're busy pretending otherwise, oh the intimacy of being crewmates who would take a bullet for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27471811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintdevour/pseuds/demonzoro
Summary: When he turns to look at the cook, Sanji is already looking at him. There’s a lit cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, and Zoro wonders if it’s ever burnt down to the end. If Sanji’s lips had gone red and tender with it. All it would take is a moment of carelessness.
Relationships: Roronoa Zoro/Sanji
Comments: 60
Kudos: 223





	a catalog of non-definitive acts

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [all my night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248460) by [bisexualbluesargent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualbluesargent/pseuds/bisexualbluesargent). 



> shoutout to landeg, who flooded me with comments on my wip that made the teeth-pulling process of finally finishing this all worth it!! much love to steph, who i could not have gotten through semester without, and cheered me on when this was a 3AM ramble on my notes app. finally thank you to anyone who replied enthusiastically to my fic wip snippets on tumblr - you made me want to write something worth showing. 
> 
> i got halfway through this fic before realising that this fic was partly inspired by @bisexualbluesargent's [all my night](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25248460), which is a breath-taking read and i cannot recommend it enough.
> 
> all mistakes are my own, i have brainworms. enjoy, and let me know what you think with a comment!

> _So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog  
>  of non-definitive acts,  
>  something other than the desperation._
> 
> _– Richard Siken,[Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48158/litany-in-which-certain-things-are-crossed-out)_

* * * * *

Tonight was one of those nights where you couldn’t tell the sky from the sea, just pitch black bleeding into pitch black until it was one depthless canvas, sewn together with mirror constellations. Zoro can’t see the moon. Whether it’s hidden, forgotten, or non-existent, it doesn’t matter. It’s only the cook standing beside him. He’d know Sanji in a lightless dark.

The motion of a ship sways gently beneath their soles. It’s not the _Sunny_ – he knows this with an inexplicable certainty. It’s with the same certainty that he knows there’s no danger in it. He feels like they don’t have to be anyone here – wherever ‘here’ is. Zoro doesn’t remember arriving. He just knows that ‘here’ demands no role of them. 

Not the first mate. Not someone with everything to prove. Not angry with each other, for no reason other than that it was familiar.

Here, the night simply holds them, infinite and undemanding.

“Do you ever think–” Sanji starts, and his words ripple out into the dark, the end of his sentence dissipating beneath the next surge of the waves. It’s quiet enough that Zoro could pretend he never heard it.

When he turns to look at the cook, Sanji is already looking at him. There’s a lit cigarette hanging loosely from his lips, and Zoro wonders if it’s ever burnt down to the end. If Sanji’s lips had gone red and tender with it. All it would take is a moment of carelessness.

Sanji inhales, and for a second, the glowing end burns brighter than any of the stars scattered above them.

There aren’t many moments where Sanji was tender around Zoro. For them, and how they were, it really would take a fire for a moment of tenderness. A burnt out cigarette. Searing drops of iodine to battle wounds. The sun behind Sanji as he tips his head back and barks a laugh, the light rays wreathing his hair in flames.

If Zoro reached into Sanji’s chest, right where his heart was, he’s sure he would find something burning there.

Zoro turns to look at him and Sanji is already looking at him. There’s a quiet consideration in his eyes, a minute tilt to his head like he’s looking at Zoro from a new angle. His expression is almost gentle. There’s no smoke on the horizon. Maybe that’s saying something.

More than what he’s willing to say, by the full flinch Sanji makes as he realises he’s spoken out loud. There’s a violence in the way he jerks his gaze away, severing the connection between them with such force that it snaps and whipped back into Zoro’s face.

It stings more than it should.

“Never mind.” Sanji snorts, dismissive. “Look at you. Not a single thought behind that huge forehead of yours. Must be nice.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Zoro retorts, a little too sharp for what really isn’t the cook’s worst insult. He’s still smarting and is graceless for it – no time to recover between the whiplash. “Thought you were going to say something important, for once.”

He sees the precision of that parting barb as it lands, right in the chink of the cook’s patented devil-may-care attitude. There’s no victory in the flinch of hurt it elicits – they’ve both come out losing.

Sanji is quiet. His eyes skitter upwards, then down, off to the side – anywhere that isn’t Zoro. One hand fiddles with the cigarette in his mouth, and Sanji presses his knuckles against his lips like he’s sealing it shut. Zoro knows the cook is trying not to set fires with that flint-sharp tongue of his. He has the look of someone weighing up the consequences, the scales swinging in a taunt of _will-you-won’t-you_.

The gap in the conversation continues to stretch, and Zoro has already had enough of things snapping back into his face.

_It’s_ won’t _then,_ he thinks bitterly. He’s so bitter with it, with the disappointment of it, all ash at the back of his throat. When Sanji drags one last inhale from his cigarette before snuffing it out, Zoro is sure the hope of a conversation goes with it. Maybe Sanji doesn’t know how to talk to him without setting fires first, uncertain without a smokescreen, and so would rather not talk.

This is where they’ve gotten themselves, all that circling bravado, dug themselves into a groove with their sagittate teeth. They have no point of reference outside of it, no precedent that comes without the exchange of barbs, so they’ve stopped trying. They circle, and circle, and circle – prowling things that don’t know how to put their hackles down.

Well. Zoro doesn’t want to be the teeth at Sanji’s throat tonight. This place was supposed to be different.

He turns to leave.

“Wait!” There’s a sharp tug at his sleeve, but what holds him there is the urgency in Sanji’s voice. “You’re right,” he says, the words leaving Sanji like a gust of wind kicked out of him, and _that_ makes Zoro turn.

The shocked look on his face makes Sanji huff, but he doesn’t let go of Zoro’s sleeve. He tugs on it instead: _come here, come back._

So Zoro does.

(Zoro knows fire and he knows teeth. He wouldn’t be who he was if he didn’t – he wouldn’t be who he was if he didn’t revel in it sometimes.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t want something else too.)

The line of Sanji’s mouth is tight and it makes him look angry. But the way he rubs the fabric of Zoro’s sleeve between his fingers is the telling part, because that’s all nervousness.

“Do you ever think–” and he clears his throat, lets go of Zoro’s sleeve, tucks his hands into his pockets. “Do you ever think: what if we did it differently?”

_Yes,_ comes Zoro’s reply in his mind, immediate. _As much as I think about the way you used to smile wider. As many times as I eat an early breakfast or a late supper and it’s just us in the kitchen. When your back is pressed to mine like we’re ready to take on the whole world together. Yes, yes, yes._

_A thousand times, yes._

Out loud, Zoro makes a non-committal sound. “Like how?”

“Like, like–” Sanji musses his hair up with one hand, then smooths it down when he realises what he’s done. His fingers card through his hair meticulously, a self-soothing tic. “Fuck. Like we’re not at each other’s throats all the time.”

“Can’t keep up any more, cook?” Zoro asks, cocksure and a creature of habit. The familiarity chafes at him. Lucky for him, Sanji is a creature of habit too, and brushes it off like lint.

“As if. I could boot your ass to the next ocean right now,” he scoffs. It’s token, but every dance has its rote steps. Sanji pivots in the conversation, and it’s not the first time Zoro admits the cook is the more graceful one of them both. “I didn’t mean we need to stop fighting to be all polite and shit. That would be–” and he makes a face, all scrunched up, and Zoro snorts in agreement. The concept is laughable, to say the least.

“I just meant... I don’t know,” Sanji says. He rolls his lips together, mouth already missing a cigarette, and Zoro watches the movement as Sanji looks off into the indistinct horizon. “I don’t know.” Uncertainty creeps into his voice, and with it, the insouciance that he hides behind. It’s sartorial, like one of his complicated suits, and Zoro can already see him beginning to pack away his halting flaws button by button.

Sanji absent-mindedly pats his pocket for his lighter.

This time, without the hurt and the bite, Zoro says, “You were going to say something important.”

Just a nudge, because sometimes Sanji is a stalling boat that needs it, even if he’d rather spin in circles forever before admitting anything close. He’s a hard worker, and no-one works harder against Sanji than Sanji himself. In that way, he’s the same person Zoro met at the Baratie – all backwards pride built with a stubborn spine. He’d tie himself to the mast of a sinking ship just to prove something.

(In that way, Zoro is the same too.)

“You used to laugh more,” Sanji blurts out. His teeth click with the force of how hard he snaps his jaw shut, but the words are already out. Zoro stares at him, stunned.

“Oh,” he says.

“That’s not the important bit,” Sanji says in a rush, then trips over it. “I mean, it _is_ important, but it’s not _the_ important thing– that is, not to say you laughing is– it’s not like I– I–” and how he’s patting down his pants and shirt for a lighter grows more frantic, making it look like the world’s most bizarre confessional slash dance. Zoro’s still too blind-sided to poke fun at him.

Then, shoving his hands in his hair and bending slightly backwards, Sanji lets out an almighty groan to the sky, like the next words are pulling teeth.

“I missed it!” Sanji admits in agony, dragging his hands down his face to pull a truly reprehensible expression at Zoro. “Just a little, alright? I missed it. Whatever. Make a big deal out of it and I’ll kill you. No-one would find your body.”

“You cope so well,” Zoro manages to get out, and Sanji flips him off. “Go on, pretty boy. I want to hear about how you’ve secretly pined after my laugh this whole time.”

The glare Sanji sends his way would be deadly, if his ears weren’t burning a siren red with a flushed face to match. Zoro almost gives him a grin right then and there. “You laugh like a cow in labor,” Sanji says, and never mind, the cook can go fuck himself. “It’s too quiet and peaceful around here without it. I like the backing track of what sounds like a birthing bovine to my everyday and you’re depriving me of it. Ever since we got back, it’s like your usual shitty stoicism got amped up by twenty.”

“Where’s the off button on you,” Zoro says in mild horror.

“You know there’s none,” he retorts, physically waving the very concept away with his hand. He doesn’t see the face Zoro makes because he’s leaning against the ship’s railing and facing outwards to the sea. (The kick to the shin still comes though, because Sanji doesn’t need to see it to know Zoro’s done it.) “The point is, we’ve always been all-or-nothing when it comes to fighting, and ribbing, and butting heads, and I still want all of that. You’re insufferable. It is how it is.”

“Ditto,” Zoro deadpans. Sanji nods.

“But I can’t help but think– if it’s all-or-nothing, then I want it all, mossbrains.” Sanji straightens out a little, posture buoyed by an intake of breath. “More of your stupid laugh, more stupid competitions. More late night drinks and more stumbling our way back to the ship shit-faced. More ass-kicking and kicking your ass. More breakfasts where it’s just us, or more nights where I bring something up to the crow’s nest on your watch. More of you insisting you don’t give a shit about food and then not leaving a single grain of rice after a plate of your favorite onigiri. Just–” and Sanji exhales shakily, slumps a little with it.

“Just– _more_. That’s what I want to say. Sorta. You kinda dragged it out of me.”

Sanji looks like the admission has scraped him out hollow, finally bled of all that damn bravado. Zoro doesn’t feel like apologising. The cook laughs to himself, and cocks his head towards him, slanting him a sideways look. “Per fucking usual. You always do this, you life-ruining mossy piece of shit.”

A flash of memory strikes Zoro: his own dead set determination, the pride of his dream, and Sanji’s stricken face – like he’s never been told he didn’t need permission to live his life.

(Since the very start.)

Zoro leans on the railing next to Sanji, close enough for their arms to press together. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Sanji echoes. Zoro waits for it to sink in, and when it does, Sanji starts and stares at him gobsmacked. “Wait. _Okay?!_ ”

“Okay,” Zoro agrees amiably. “Sounds like a pretty sweet deal to me. This includes more free food, right? More booze, too. _Good_ booze.” And finally, Zoro grins. “You know, since you’re so sweet on my laugh.”

Sanji stares, and stares, and stares. And then he starts laughing, and as it goes on, Zoro can’t help but laugh a little too.

Sanji slaps a hand over his eyes. “Four fucking Blues, what have I done?” Sanji dramatically bemoans, exaggerating a drawl. “You’re never going to let that go, are you?”

“Nope,” Zoro answers with relish, popping the _‘p’_. Sanji just laughs more at that, tucking his head into the arms folded across the railing and letting his body shake with it. Zoro lets the tremors jostle against him, self-satisfaction curling the edge of his lips and winding around his heart with a squeeze.

It occurs to him that Sanji’s not the only one gone over someone’s laugh. He doesn’t flinch away from the warmth of the realisation. He lingers in it instead, a pleasant pause like sitting in a ray of stray sunlight.

When Sanji finally turns his head to peek out of the cradle he’s made of his arms, the laughter has subsided, but he’s still grinning up at Zoro. At that moment, he thinks that undeniably, Sanji burns as the brightest point of the universe. Planets would twist out of their natural orbits to revolve around him. The countless stars are relegated to cheap after-images in his wake. Here, they can be anything, and Sanji has become an amalgam of light and warmth and fire-smoke. It makes Zoro think he can be anything too.

Things like brave. Or careless.

Zoro guesses he’s about to find out which.

“Cook,” he says. “I’m about to do something stupid.”

Sanji straightens up with a sardonic tilt to his expression. “Oh? And this is news, how?”

“Shut up.” Zoro steps into Sanji’s space, and Sanji tilts in a way that mirrors him, the perfect complement without half a thought put into it, born from every battle they’ve slotted side-by-side together. Sanji has the next smart remark on his tongue already even as Zoro marvels at this.

“I mean, if you’re announcing it every single time now, it’s going to get real tiring real–” he continues, all cheeky witticisms until the moment Zoro slides his hands along Sanji’s forearms, precursor to his intent.

“–fast,” the other finishes, quietly. Zoro’s touch trails up to Sanji’s wrists, hands encircling them until he’s gently guiding Sanji’s arms upwards, closer. It’s almost a physical pain, the newness of this, tender in the way that this action strips him to rawness. It feels raw enough that it’s almost jarring that it’s bloodless. (Fire and blood and teeth — wanting something else besides doesn’t account for the fact he’s still surprised when he manages to grasp it.) 

The silence is enough to choke on, but he won’t. This is important.

“All or nothing,” Zoro repeats, half an assertion and half a question, as he pauses long enough for Sanji to pull away if he wants to. The stars have begun to dive into the sea, and the waves sound a lot further. When Sanji stays where he is, Zoro brings the other’s hands to his mouth and places his mouth against Sanji’s fingers, closing his eyes in a moment of reverence. He trails upwards then, gentle, perhaps uncharacteristically so, Sanji’s sure to bluster about it – but gentle nonetheless, light lips on the hands that have fed their crew and wrapped his wounds. It’s a short yet inexorable journey to Sanji’s knuckles, smooth yet not completely unblemished, despite the cook’s best efforts.

He feels the fine hairs on Sanji’s hand tickle his nose, but it’s strange. He expected the scent of spices, or tobacco, but there’s nothing. Not even the scent of sea salt in the air. Zoro’s eyes flutter open, grips Sanji’s hands a little tighter, consternation settling in him like thick ink that blots at his conscience. He meets Sanji’s look of small amusement.

Something’s wrong, but it’s hard to pull away when Sanji is still smiling at him, completely unawares to the pinpricks of light cascading into the water all around him. “I’m not going to break,” he says, as the ship begins to rumble around them, a building tremolo of dread.

_No, you wouldn’t, but–_ Zoro thinks, and abruptly he wants to commit this moment to memory, the instinct that it’s _important_ bolting through his bones like a panicked gazelle. It’s as if Sanji hears him, or maybe he’s said it aloud without knowing it, because caution begins to mar Sanji’s radiant expression, a stain on the edges of his smile.

The stars are falling faster now, the sky folding along with them, pulled downwards like a heavy curtain.

“Zoro,” he starts, and the sound of waves crash with overwhelming violence against Zoro’s ears, then recede as if oceans away. The crescendo of the ship’s distress builds and builds, ratcheting upwards in nauseous increments. Sanji tilts his head, rephrases the question. “What do you think is going to break?”

Zoro feels sick.

He doesn’t understand the question, but something about it strikes a chord within him, producing a most terrible note. When Sanji smiles, it’s all wrong (–not the sharp bright slant of challenge or a soft self-deprecation, but one of pity– Sanji’s never pitied Zoro) and he recoils from it. “What do you think is going to break?” he repeats, putting his hand over Zoro’s chest, right over his heart. 

It feels like it’s burning. 

Sanji’s fingers sink into his flesh like it’s wax. “You don’t have to be so–”

Zoro jolts, eyes flying open and drawing in a sharp breath. There’s a weight on his chest, heavy but not stiflingly so (that’s not why he’s short of breath). It’s a hand on his chest (not through– and though his ribs heave like bellows, the muscle is strong and solid). The waves thunder against the curve of _Sunny’s_ bulk, distant but having turned from benign to furious in the time Zoro has been asleep.

A face hovers over him, a familiar curled eyebrow bunched downwards over a storm-wrought eye.

“–Careful,” Sanji says.

Zoro’s throat clicks as he tries to say something, sleep-grit still glued to the corner of his eye, his voice only just rousing itself from disuse. Their change in position disorients him. When did he lie down, with a blanket bunched under his body and Sanji leaning over him–

–and then Sanji says, maybe as something that’s supposed to be a reassurance, but feels like a backhanded slap across the face: “It was just a dream.”

Zoro flinches, a violent reflux of shame that seizes his entire body, and he doesn’t even have time to rein it in as his weight finally careens off the hammock, making him collide with the floor in a painful tumble. 

He’s checking that he hasn’t bitten his tongue off when he hears Sanji’s, “Well, I did try,” before footsteps pad away. The smell of sweet spice and musk lingers in the air. It’s enough to make Zoro pause on his spot on the floor just a second too long, realisation and misery coming to greet him hand-in-hand.

It was just a dream.

He climbs back into his bunk just to do something, rousing from his forlorn spot on the floor, so Sanji won’t see him sitting there still sleep-drunk and say something snide. Or worse– ask him what’s wrong with him. 

(They don’t have time for all that. It’s a long list that’s more of a catalog: burnt out cigarettes and tender lips and feather touches that flay him to rawness and _more_. They don’t have enough time – Sanji has to go make breakfast after all.)

Draping the blanket over himself is a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless– swaddling his mortification away from sight. Dredges of the dream still lingered, snatches of conversation and bursts of warmth now fuzzy around the corners and slipping through his grip. What does it say about him, to revel in Sanji at his side – honest and laughing and agreeable – and have it all be made up? A Frankenstein of real moments (spark-bright smile and halting flaws–archived in, well, _loving detail_ sounds sickening) stitched into an impossible context, snipped and glued together like a heartsick teenager’s scrapbook. 

Zoro tells himself he’s not sulking into his pillow.

The sound of a locker hinging open attracts his attention, nothing grating – Franky maintains the ship too well for anything less than oiled hinges – but the morning hush amplifies any minutiae. The creak of the ship’s bulk, the slip of bare feet across the cabin floor, a susurration of cloth against skin followed by the brief hiss of air being sucked through gritted teeth. It’s only then that Zoro realises he’s watching Sanji pull off the soft sleep shirt over the arch of his spine, hurrying into a crisp white button-up before the morning chill can raise more goosebumps.

He doesn’t flinch away, or make an ass of himself by tumbling out of his bunk a second time. Being embarrassed about some bare skin is a ship that’s long since sailed in the confines of the crew. It’s far from the first time he’s seen one of the guys change, and watching Sanji go through his morning routine is hardly novel. 

Still, it doesn’t stop him from lingering on the meticulous way Sanji prims and buttons his cuffs, or hiding a smile at the duck’s tail made at the back of Sanji’s hair, no doubt having dried while ruffled the wrong way. More things to archive and catalog in memory. 

“Want anything in particular for breakfast?” Sanji says, leaning towards the small mirror he has hung on the inside of his locker door. With one hand, he angles the door to catch Zoro’s eye in the reflection, a private quirk to his mouth. “I know you’re awake.”

Zoro flicks his eye towards the round window on the cabin’s entrance door, and outside, the world’s vestige is invisible under swirling vaporous mist. No sunlight cuts through, making the cold all the more colder, both in temperature and the unwelcome bleakness of it. _Hot soup,_ Zoro thinks. _Something hearty with chunks and color. Enough to warm him to the tip of his toes._

Sanji raises an eyebrow at him in the reflection. Zoro makes the verbose effort of whuffing out a breath. He gets a snort in response.

“I was thinking, maybe some good minestrone,” Sanji continues, as if he’d meant to all along. “Mushroom soup for anyone who doesn’t want something so filling so early. Toasted bread to share. A fruit platter, with wafers and cream for after.” Zoro watches Sanji wing through his assortment of ties, settling on a shimmering yellow one with white flowering brocade. “Tea and coffee, as always. Just warm milk for Chopper. Perfect for a morning like today’s.”

Today apparently also calls for a waistcoat, midnight blue with ivory buttons, snug over Sanji’s curving back and tapering to show off the waist. He doesn’t ask what Zoro thinks. Zoro’s mouth is already watering. 

(For the breakfast menu, of course.)

As Sanji fiddles with his hair, smoothing it down and fluffing it up to standards incomprehensible to Zoro, he watches Sanji pick at the particulars of how his hair parts, all while missing the glaring duck’s tail at the back. The amusement of it starts like a candle flame in the lantern frame of his ribs. But what makes it _warmth_ – settling into him where the morning chill can’t reach – is the knowledge of future mornings-to-come, hazy in half-sleep while he watches Sanji go through the motions. 

The sentiment is so disgustingly and utterly domestic, and it makes the warmth turn into an ache. It makes Zoro shut his eyes to it all, hard enough until there are starbursts, the equivalent of snapping fingers in front of himself as if saying, _where’d you lose the memo, idiot? Awake means you stop dreaming of stupid impossible things._

_Is it so impossible though?_ says a traitorous voice in him, and instinctively, Zoro scowls at it. 

It’s a rabbit-hole, one he’s never been able to resist, hungry like a hound. One messy convoluted warren of _what-if’s_ , selfish wants that feel like chasing his tail and fantasies that make his head spin. _How bad could it be?_ the voice continues to wheedle. _How long have you wanted this?_

He can still hear Sanji puttering about; opening a jar of something and the clatter when he rearranges his belongings. The lack of sight makes his vision tunnel, already seeing in his mind’s eye how Sanji will dab cologne on his collarbone, his wrists, reaching around to the nape of his neck. It would be so easy, to slip out of his bunk, silently pad his way over, to fit his hands on the perfect niche of Sanji’s hips and poke his nose at the dot of spiced cologne just above the spine. Maybe Sanji would startle at first, curse him for sneaking up on him but lean into the touch, the constant need to be contrary and contradictory. Maybe he would say something like, _“Out of bed so early?”_ in a way that’s meant to be mocking, some dig at his sleep schedule, except for how the words are stringed with poorly hidden affection. 

Maybe Sanji would turn around, make that face like he wants to laugh when he knows he should be playing angry, and finally, _finally_ kiss him.

The candle flame licks at the back of his ribs, and the ache doubles with it.

The sound of footsteps make their way towards him, and he feels the movement of Sanji tidying his bunk above Zoro’s. In a well-practiced charade, Zoro levels out his breathing and relaxes the coil he’s crooked his legs into. Enough to broadcast he’s fallen asleep again, or is about to. Definitely not the look of someone who’s doing mental gymnastics about kissing his crewmate and the frantic inner conflict that came with the thought.

Definitely not.

“You looked like you were about to say something,” Sanji says into the quiet. “I caught your look in the mirror earlier.”

Zoro doesn’t change his breathing. His shoulders rise and fall in easy rote. He doesn’t react, and he certainly doesn’t reply.

(Too many things to say, a whole catalog of them.)

For long, drawn-out seconds, there’s just the absence of words. The precipice of a conversation that gapes between them, the morning mist perhaps slinking from under the door and obscuring this too. _Any moment now,_ Zoro thinks, _he’ll reach out and shake me, call me out on the act and draw out an answer._

Zoro breathes in, and breathes out.

In the end, in what couldn’t have been more than a paltry few seconds but felt distorted beyond that, Sanji does reach out.

But not to shake Zoro out of his sleeping charade. It’s the pad of his thumb, pressed gently on the furrow wedged into Zoro’s brow, a furrow he hadn’t even been aware of himself. It’s a slow pressure, a minute upstroke that has him helplessly undoing the tension there, one that returns with a vengeance to lodge in his throat. Zoro doesn’t make a sound– couldn’t, even if he wanted to. There’s something spider-spun to this, fragile and entrapping all at one. 

_What do you think is going to break?_

“Nothing important, maybe,” Sanji says, and he’s talking to himself now, careful of what he thinks is Zoro sleeping and whisper-quiet to suit. The volume of his voice is how Zoro can tell Sanji is close, closer than he was when Zoro had first jolted awake. “Just another shitty dream.”

Zoro can’t breathe. The smell of sweet spice dilates in the air and the warren of _what-if’s_ have perforated him with want. He is hungry like a hound, howling for something he doesn’t even know the taste of, and he’s teeth and rawness and he wants something _more_. 

He remembers the cut of Sanji’s pity, the remaining knife wound of what is already a fading dream. It’s just as easy to imagine – easier, in some respects, than the kissing and the pliancy – that curve of Sanji’s mouth curdled into something rancid, the bitter laughing way he would snarl, _‘what were you thinking–’_ , every different way this could dash Zoro against the rocks with guts spilled out for the gulls.

But.

“Do you ever think–” Zoro starts, eyes flying open and words scraping from his throat–

The room is empty of anyone else awake. In his bolt upwards, the blanket had slid off him, the cold a shock against his skin. The cabin door clicks shut, and beyond the porthole, he can’t even see a retreating silhouette for all the mist and lack of light. 

Whether it’s important or not falls second to the fact it’s all a little too late. 

Sanji is already gone.

* * * * *

**Author's Note:**

> honestly zoro? sanji's just in the kitchen, go get him.
> 
> thank you so much for reading! here's a post on [tumblr](https://demonzoro.tumblr.com/post/634317501986193408/fic-a-catalog-of-non-definitive-acts-pairing) & [twitter](https://twitter.com/saintdevour/status/1340903353153249280) if you want to support the fic there.
> 
> tumblr: [@demonzoro](http://demonzoro.tumblr.com)  
> twitter: [@saintdevour](http://twitter.com/saintdevour)


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